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Australia Set To Have Its Coldest Winter On Record

Australia Set To Have Its Coldest Winter On Record

David Taylor, who runs the East Coast Weather Facebook page, said it may snow in places it has rarely snowed before.

Chris Ogden

Chris Ogden

While we've all been freezing our arses off in the Northern hemisphere over the past few months, folk in Australia have been busy enjoying the summer sun and sticking shrimp on the barbie.

Well, Aussies, it's probably time to invest in some thermals - the land down under is set to be hit by its coldest winter on record, an amateur weather forecaster has confirmed.

David Taylor, who runs the East Coast Weather Facebook page, has said that temperatures and snowfall may be worse than previous years and impact huge swathes of the country, the Daily Mail has reported.

An Australian skier at the Winter Olympics. This could be you soon.
PA

"It will be slightly cooler than normal in the north but the real cold will be in the southern states and southeast Queensland," Taylor told the Cairns Post.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there is snow in places where it hasn't snowed for a long time."

Taylor makes his forecast using a formula which considers changes in sunspot activity, Global Forecast System modelling, and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast.

If you're wondering why you should listen to the advice of some bloke off Facebook, Taylor has been right about meteorlogical events in the recent past - putting his success down to his sunspot tracking.

Taylor was the only person to correctly predict the massive weather event that hit Townsville last week which saw the north-east coast hit with 600m of rain on 28 February.

He also predicted that this week a 'decent cyclone' will cross the Queensland coast between Cairns and Gladstone, backing his assertion up by pointing to other forecasters who are saying the same thing.

"It's looking pretty scary," he said.

Europe and America have already endured a hard winter this year with huge parts of the world seeing historic amounts of snowfall and freezing temperatures.

Back in January, Storm Grayson battered the eastern coast of the United States, sending temperatures in some areas plummeting to an unfathomable -69C.

The arrival of the 'bomb cyclone' brought with it a massive blizzard, freezing lakes and rivers across the north-east of the US and making -39C temperatures feel twice as cold due to icy winds.

The weather was so cold that it even temporarily froze Niagara Falls, turning the famous waterfalls into giant icicles.

Over the past few weeks Europe's been bearing the brunt of the weather too thanks to the arrival of Storm Emma and the Beast from the East.

The weather was so bad in the UK that the Met Office were forced to announce red severe weather warnings for snow, high winds and ice in some areas - the first time that's happened since 2013.

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: Winter, Snow, Weather, World News, News, Australia